The Eric Roberts Horror Collection: 2 Bedroom 1 Bath (dir by Stanley Yung)

Posted on October 13, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In this 2014 shocker, a young couple moves into what seems like a perfect 2 bedroom, 1 bath apartment. Rachel (Michele Hooks) and Kevin (Andrew W. Walker) are hoping to start a family in their new apartment. Their landlady (Dee Wallace) is very happy to hear that. In fact, it’s hard not to feel that she’s a bit too happy to hear it….

In many ways, 2 Bedroom 1 Bath is a typical “is it haunted or not?” thriller. From the minute that they move into the apartment, Kevin starts to have strange and nightmarish visions. He imagines himself trying to pick up a baby, just for it to fall to the ground and shatter like a doll. Dark shadows move in the background while pale faces are reflected in the windows. After taking a shower, Rachel doesn’t notice that ghostly figure in the mirror behind her. Things get creepier and stranger after Rachel gets pregnant and Kevin finds himself not only tempted by student but also taunted by mysterious messages that appear in the mail box.

It’s a bit predictable but Hooks and Walker both give strong performances and director Stanley Yung does a great job of creating an ominous and dream-like atmosphere. This is a film that features several dozen jump scares and just about everyone of them is effective. It’s an effective piece of haunted apartment horror.

As for Eric Roberts, his role is a small one. He plays the fertility specialist and he has three scenes with Rachel and Kevin. When Roberts first appeared, I assumed his character was going to be revealed to be a part of the supernatural conspiracy but no. He was just a well-intentioned doctor with two patients who had no idea how much trouble they were about to face. To be honest, I’m so used to seeing Eric Roberts playing villains that it was kind of nice to see him playing a sympathetic professional for once.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

Made-For-TV Horror Review: Mind Over Murder (dir by Ivan Nagy)

Posted on October 13, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In the 1979 made-for-TV movie, Mind over Murder, Deborah Raffin stars as Suzy.

Suzy is a model and an actress. She has a nice apartment, which she shares with her football-loving boyfriend, Ben (Bruce Davison). She has a best friend (Penelope Willis), who is constantly looking to get laid. Her latest job requires her to dance with a man who is dressed up like a giant hamburger. It would seem that, by the standards of 1979, Suzy has the perfect life.

However, her life is turned upside down when she suddenly starts having visions. All of the action around her will either switch to slow motion or stop altogether while Suzy has a vision of a scary-looking bald man (Andrew Prine) stalking her. Her most disturbing vision involves Suzy hearing the sound of a pilot begging for help while his airplane crashes. Ben tells her that she’s probably just working too hard but, the next morning, Suzy looks at a newspaper and immediately sees a headline about a plane crash.

With Ben dismissing her concerns, Suzy takes it upon herself to meet with the two detectives (David Ackroyd and Robert Englund — yes, Robert Englund!) investigating the plane crash. They are surprisingly sympathetic to Suzy’s story of hearing the plane crash before it happened. They arrange for her to meet a psychic researcher, who explains that Suzy must have some sort of mental connection to whoever was responsible for the crash. While Ben continues to be skeptical and jealous of all the time that she’s spending with one of the detectives, Suzy keeping having disturbing visions of the bald man….

Considering its origins as a made-for-TV movie, Mind Over Murder is a surprisingly frightening film. This is a film that proves that slow motion can make just about anything creepy and Deborah Raffin does a good job of showing us just how much Suzy dreads those moments when everything starts to slow down and she realizes that she’s about to get hit with another vision. That said, what truly makes this film frightening is the performance of Andrew Prine, who plays the bald man as being every woman’s nightmare. He’s a misogynist, the type who is convinced that every woman should be in love with him and that those who aren’t should be punished. Whether he’s appearing in Suzy’s visions or stepping into her reality, Andrew Prine is never less than terrifying.

Along with featuring a scary performance from Prine, this film also features a genuinely likable one from Robert Englund. Englund is playing a nice guy here. In fact, before he made horror history in A Nightmare in Elm Street, Englund almost always played nice guys. It’s interesting to watch him here, with his friendly manner and his polite style, and to imagine the roles Englund would have ended up playing if he hadn’t gotten typecast as a horribly scarred serial killer.

The first hour of Mind over Murder is brilliant. The final 30 minutes, unfortunately, find the film turning into a far more conventional thriller, as Suzy’s visions are replaced by the Bald Man actually coming after her. That said, this is still an effective horror thriller and one that deserves to be rediscovered this Halloween season.

Retro Television Review: Miami Vice 5.2 “Redemption In Blood”

Posted on October 13, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Mondays, I will be reviewing Miami Vice, which ran on NBC from 1984 to 1989. The entire show can be purchased on Prime!

This week, Sonny Burnett continues his reign of terror!

Episode 5.2 “Redemption in Blood”

(DIr by Paul Krasny, originally aired on November 11th, 1988)

When last we checked in with Miami Vice, Sonny thought he was a drug lord named Sonny Burnett and he was firing his gun at Tubbs, who he had just recognized as a cop. This episode reveals that Sonny didn’t shoot Tubbs. Instead, he aimed at a wall, firing while Tubbs made his escape.

Working with the psychotic Cliff King (Matt Frewer), Sonny takes over his late boss’s drug empire and continue to fight a war against El Gato (Jon Polito). El Gato is meant to be a “flamboyant” drug dealer, which is a polite way of saying that Polito overacts through the entire episode.

The show hedges its bets by having Cliff commit all of the murders while Sonny rises to power. In fact, when Sonny catches Cliff torturing two of El Gato’s men, Sonny orders Cliff to stop and then offers them jobs in the Burnett operation. Amazingly, over the course of the entire three-episode Burnett arc, Sonny manages to get through the whole thing only killing people in self-defense. Even the cop that he killed at the end of the previous season was a dirty cop who had been sent to kill him. I get that the show couldn’t take Sonny totally over to the dark side but it’s still hard to believe that Burnett took over the Miami underworld without getting his hands a bit more dirty than he did.

A car bomb (courtesy of El Gato) knocks Sonny unconscious and, when he wakes up, he suddenly starts to remember who he actually is. Finally realizing that his name is Crockett, Sonny turns himself into the Vice Squad and is promptly arrested while Kate Bush sings, “Don’t give up.” Sonny tells Castillo, Switek, and Tubbs that he’s ready to acccept the consequences of whatever he did during his previous bout of amnesia. But then Sonny escapes custody and sets up both Cliff and El Gato for a great fall so I guess he wasn’t totally ready to turn himself in and head off to prison.

Tubbs, who now trusts Sonny, helps him take out Cliff King and the Burnett organization. Sonny shoots Cliff to save Tubbs. With Tubbs dangling off of a walkway, Sonny pulls him back up to safety. Sonny then goes back to his mansion where he and his girlfriend (Debra Feuer) are taking hostage by a gun-wielding El Gato. “Where is the safe?” El Gato demands. Sonny tricks El Gato into thinking the safe is in the room where he keeps his pet panther. (Apparently, all drug lords were given either a tiger, a panther, a cheetah, or a leopard.) El Gato gets mauled to death as the episode ends.

This episode suggests that Sonny is going to be let off the hook because he finally remembered he was. I don’t really think that it would really work like that. Sonny has multiple warrants out and he also killed a cop, albeit a corrupt one. If Sonny isn’t on trial in next week’s episode, I’m going to be a little annoyed.

This episode ended the Burnett trilogy about as well as it could be ended. The idea that all Sonny needed was to survive a second near-fatal explosion made me smile. What if El Gato hadn’t tried to blow him up? I guess it’s a good thing that he did! While Polito went overboard, Matt Frewer gave a very good performance as the villainous Cliff King. It’s a bit of a shame that he died so dramatically because Cliff would have made a good recurring villain.

This episode was definitely better than anything from season 4. It’ll be interesting to see how the rest of season 5 plays out.

Horror Film Review: Kill, Baby…. Kill (dir by Mario Bava)

Posted on October 13, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Kill, Baby…. Kill!, Mario Bava’s 1966 masterpiece, opens at the turn of the 20th Century.

In a small German village, a woman named Irena Hollander (Mirella Panfili) runs up a set of stairs at an abandoned church. From the bell tower, she either falls or deliberately jumps and crashes into the sharp spikes of the gate below. Agck! Falling from that high of a spot is bad enough without then landing on a gate and getting pierced by several sharp points at once. Making it even more disturbing is that it’s suggested that the spikes don’t instantly kill Irena. It’s a grotesque and disturbing image, shown to us in bright color. It’s death as pop art. It’s the sort of thing that only Mario Bava could have paid off.

Dr. Paul Eswai (Giacomo Rossi Stuart) is summoned to the village by Inspector Kruger (Piero Lulli). Kruger suspects that Irena may have been intentionally pushed and he wants Paul to conduct an autopsy. However, the superstitious townspeople say that her body must be buried immediately and Paul and Kruger actually have to rush out to the local cemetery to prevent the Irena from being buried. The gravediggers warn Paul and Kruger that they will be bringing a curse on themselves by not burying Irena. Paul and Kruger don’t listen. At the autopsy, a local medical student named Monica (Erika Blanc) is assigned to serve as the witness. Paul discovers that a silver coin has somehow been embedded in Irena’s heart.

Paul discovers that the villagers live in fear of the ghost a little girl. They claim that if you see the girl, that means you are cursed to die. Paul, being a man of science, is skeptical. When the daughter of the local innkeeper becomes horrified after saying that she has seen the little girl, Paul is critical of the treatment offered up by her superstitious parents. (That treatment include a chain of leeches — agck!) Meanwhile, Kruger goes to the estate of the mysterious Baroness Graps (Giovanna Galletti) and disappears! It soon becomes clear that the key to mystery lies in the estate of the Baroness and her past. Karl (Luciano Catenacci), the burgomaster, knows the secret of the Baroness but soon, he finds himself being targeted by the little girl.

Maria Bava is a director who has been cited as an influence by everyone from David Lynch to Martin Scorsese and Kill, Baby…. Kill! is his masterpiece, a work of horrific pop art that is full of atmosphere, creative use of color, and an intentionally surreal style of plotting that makes the film less a standard story and more of a filmed nightmare. Towards the end, as Paul pursues the ghost of the little girl, an overhead view of a special staircase, lit in blues and greens, brings to mind Hitchock’s Vertigo while the village itself feels as if it could have been transported over from a Hammer horror film. Paul is a man of science and the villages are people of superstition and, in the end, both seem to be equally destructive. Paul is too quick to dismiss the old traditions while the villagers are too quick to put their faith in herbs and incantations. Bava creates an atmosphere in which everyone seems to be equally doomed.

Of course, the main reason why Kill, Baby…. Kill! works is because that little girl (played by Valerio Vali, about whom little is known) is absolutely terrifying. When she suddenly shows up at a window and stares straight at her latest victim, it’s a true jump scare. She had an intense stare but, even worse, she seems to be so happy after she’s cursed someone. The true horror is that she can basically pop up anywhere. It doesn’t matter if you’re a good person or a rational person or someone who doesn’t even believe in ghosts. Fate cannot be escaped.

Kill, Baby…. Kill! is a both a story of nightmarish horror and a love letter to pure cinema.

Kill, Baby, Kill

October True Crime: The Texas RailRoad Killer (dir by Luis Antonio Rodriguez)

Posted on October 13, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Angel Maturino Resendiz, now there was a scary person.

Resendiz was a drifter who hitched rides on trains and who killed at least 15 people over the course of 13 years. Because he traveled by stowing away on trains, his first few crimes went undetected. Even when people realized that there was a serial killer haunting the nation’s railroads, no one knew exactly where Resendiz would next turn up. He committed the majority of his murders in Texas, killing random people and using whatever method happened to be most convenient at the time. However, he also killed people in Florida, Georgia, California, Kentucky, and Illinois. He would steal his victim’s jewelry but leave behind their money. (He would return to his home in Mexico to give the jewelry to his sister and mother, both of whom apparently had no idea where he was getting his gifts from.) After he was placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted List, Resendiz eventually surrendered himself in 1999. Resendiz was apparently under the impression that he would not be given the death penalty if voluntarily turned himself in. Resendiz was wrong about that and he was executed in 2006.

Until Resendiz surrendered himself, everyone living near a railroad track was nervous. I know this from personal experience because, in 1999, my family lived close enough to the tracks that I could lay in bed in the middle of the night and listen to the sound of the trains rumbling in the distance. Resendiz was a killer who targeted those who were smaller and weaker than him, which basically would have included me, my mom, and my sisters. Apparently, whenever he did a home invasion, he would also eat whatever food he could find in the refrigerator. Whereas most killers would probably want to get away from the scene as quickly as possible, Resendiz would sit down and eat leftovers. For whatever reason, that little detail is the one that creeps me out the most.

2020’s The Texas Railroad Killer is loosely based on the crimes of Angel Resendiz. The film features Resendiz (Lino Aquino) as he wanders around South Texas, randomly killing. As played by Aquino, Resendiz comes across as being a somewhat dazed, paranoid shell of a human being, a shadow of death who doesn’t seem to be aware of the difference between reality and what’s only happening in his mind. Does he really witness a group of strippers being gunned down by law enforcement or is it something that he only imagined? It’s hard to tell. After Resendiz commits a murder, he looks over his victim’s identification as if he’s trying to absorb the life that he just ended. And yes, he does eat in a victim’s house. Agck!

The Texas Railroad Killer is an extremely low-budget film. Lino Aquino is convincingly out-of-it as Resendiz but some of the other performers are noticeably less convincing in their roles. The film is largely plotless and the slow pace will be a turn-off for many viewers. And yet, there’s a disturbing power to the film’s sun-drenched visuals. The images of the sweaty Resendiz walking down broken streets or stumbling dazed out of someone’s home stick with you. Flaws and all, the film captures the soulless existence of a man who lives for no other reason than to kill.

Personally, it makes me glad that he’s dead.

Horror Song of the Day: Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield

Posted on October 13, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Mike Oldfield didn’t write Tubular Bells specifically for The Exorcist but it’s a song that works perfectly for the film. Oldfield’s song, which was rumored to have originally envisioned as being a Christmas instrumental, become an iconic horror them.

Horror Film Review: Willy’s Wonderland (dir by Kevin Lewis)

Posted on October 13, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

2021’s Willy’s Wonderland takes place in an dilapidated restaurant.

Back in the day, Willy’s Wonderland was the ideal place to go if you were young and celebrating your birthday. The animatronic mascots would sing “Happy birthday” and maybe meet your parents. Willy Weasel, Arty Alligator, Cammy Chameleon, Ozzie Ostrich, Tito Turtle, Knighty Knight, Gus Gorilla, and Siren Sara promised fun and cheesy entertainment to anyone looking for a nice family meal!

Unfortunately, people stopped going to Willy’s once it was discovered that the owner was a serial killer. Jerry Robert Willis (Grant Cramer) and his seven friends were cannibals who regularly sacrificed families. Eventually, the police caught up to him but, even under new ownership, no one wanted to eat at Willy’s. There were rumors that Willis and his friends had transferred their souls into the animatronic figures but surely, that could not have been true!

Right?

Nicolas Cage plays a man with no name. When his car breaks down, the local mechanic agrees to fix the car if the man agrees to spend the night as the janitor at Willy’s. Apparently, it’s been a struggle to keep a night janitor at the place. People find the location to be creepy and, of course, the animatronic mascots keep killing anyone dumb enough to try to mop the floors. Cage’s man with no name silently agrees. Everything that Cage does, he does without a word. This is one of the rare films where Nicolas Cage, usually a champion talker, says absolutely nothing.

Now, I should mention that there actually is a plot to Willy’s Wonderland. Liv (Emily Tosta) and her friends are trying to burn the place down because, years ago, Liv’s parents were murdered by the mascots. Unfortunately, Liv and her friends aren’t that smart and they end up trapped in Willy’s Wonderland. The majority of them quickly fall victim to the mascots. The deaths are appropriately gruesome, though tinged with the dark humor that would come from essentially being killed by a knock-off version of Chuck E. Cheese.

But really, the plot isn’t important. This film is entirely about Nicolas Cage, playing a man with no name. Cage takes the janitorial job and, over the course of the night, he battles the mascots. At the same time, he also makes it a point to continue to do his job. Besieged or not, he agreed to clean the place up. He takes his breaks and plays pinball exactly as scheduled, even if that means abandoning Liv and her friends. Normally, you might think that this would be bad behavior on the part of Cage’s character. Abandoning someone in the middle of a battle is not usually encouraged. But Liv and her friends are very annoying. Cage is ultimately the hero by default. Yes, he’s fighting and killing the mascots but he’s really only doing it because they’re getting in his way while he’s trying to do his job. The fact that he helps out Liv is largely coincidental.

Willy’s Wonderland proves that Cage doesn’t need a lot of lines to be the center of a film. Even without speaking, he’s such a wonderfully eccentric presence that you can’t help but watch him and cheer him on. Admittedly, Willy’s Wonderland is never that scary, though the “Happy Birthday” song is definitely creepy. The mascots are a bit too cartoonish to be truly frightening. But, if the film doesn’t really work as a horror film, it does work as an adrenaline-fueled Cage match. And that’s nearly as good.

Horror On The Lens: Where Have All The People Gone? (dir by John Llewellyn Moxey)

Posted on October 13, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In the creepy 1974 film, Peter Graves plays a father who goes on a camping trip with his two teenage children (one of whom is played by Kathleen Quinlan). A sudden earthquake and a solar flare causes the trio to try to return to civilization, where they discover that almost everyone has been reduced to a powdery substance and there are only a few crazed survivors. They try to make their way back to their home in Malibu, facing danger at every leg of their journey.

(It’s almost a low-budget and far more dramatic version of Night of the Comet.)

Effective despite its made-for-TV origins, Where Have All The People Gone? was obviously mean to serve as a pilot for a television series. The series didn’t happen but, even with a somewhat open-ended conclusion, the movie still works.

October Positivity: Holyman Undercover (dir by David A.R. White)

Posted on October 12, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 2010’s Holyman Undercover, David A.R. White plays Roy. Roy is an 18 year-old Amish dude from Kansas. It’s time for him to experience Rumspringa, a period in which he can live life amongst “the English” and decide whether or not he wants to commit to being Amish. Roy decides to go Los Angeles so he can track down his uncle and work with him as a missionary.

Roy struggles in Los Angeles. Giving money to one homeless man leads to him nearly getting mugged. When he meets his uncle, he discovers that Brian (also played by David A.R. White) is now a struggling actor who has a taste for cocaine. (Brian claims that he’s a holyman working undercover.) Accompanying Brian to an audition leads to Roy getting cast as Satan on a primetime soap opera. His wife is played by vapid supermodel Tiffany Towers (Jennifer Lyons). Meanwhile, the show’s producer is a former country girl named Annie (Andrea Logan White) and soon, Roy is having fantasies about Annie dressing up like an Amish woman and dancing in a field with him. However, the head of the network (Fred Willard) wants Roy to date Tiffany because it’ll be good publicity for the show.

Throughout it all, Roy remains innocent and confused about the modern world. He’s never watched television. He doesn’t know how to use a phone. He doesn’t understand what a credit card is. He’s earnest and honest to a fault and, even after Tiffany makes out with him, he continues to insist that he only has eyes for Annie.

Of course, in reality, I imagine that the typical Amish person knows how to use a phone. I imagine that they probably also know what a television is and they probably even understand that you’re expected to pay your credit card debt. The Amish may choose to reject a good deal of the modern world but that doesn’t mean that they don’t know what the modern world is. But this film isn’t meant to be a realistic portrayal of the Amish or of Hollywood or of really anything.

Indeed, I’m not really sure what to make of this film. It’s faith-based and it ends with Roy delivering a simple message about loving others but the film’s humor is often rather mean-spirited and there’s several jokes that are more than a little racist and homophobic. (Japanese tourists take pictures while shouting, “Godzilla!” When Brian ends up in jail, his cellmate is a hulking black man who says his name is Beef because “it’s what’s for dinner.”) David A.R. White is not bad as Roy but his performance as Brian is incredibly shrill and there’s really no reason, beyond ego, for director White to have cast himself in both roles.

Probably the best thing that one can say about the film is that the name actors — Fred Willard, Clint Howard, Edie McClurg, and Staci Keanan — all manage to survive with their dignity intact. Indeed, the highlight of the film is, believe it or not, John Schneider earnestly playing himself as the actor who replaces Roy as Satan and who then promptly launches a presidential campaign. “The country’s going to Hell anyway!” he says, with just the right amount of self-awareness.

Interestingly enough, the film does end with one particularly prophetic scene, as Roy and Annie leave Hollywood to produce an Amish dating show. Tiffany moves with them to the farm and a group of Amish men compete for her hand in marriage. Farmer Wants A Wife, anyone?

Late Night Retro Television Review: Degrassi: The Next Generation 1.9 “Coming of Age”

Posted on October 12, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Sunday, I will be reviewing the Canadian series, Degrassi: The Next Generation, which aired from 2001 to 2015! The series can be streamed on YouTube and Tubi.

Whatever it takes, I know I can make it through….

Episode 1.9 “Coming of Age”

(Dir by Bruce MacDonald, originally aired on Mary 13th, 2002)

Degrassi: The Next Generation‘s slogan used to be “Degrassi goes there!” and that’s certainly the case with this week’s episode. Emma goes from being irrationally annoyed by Sean and Manny to crying while watching a documentary about space. Spike decides to cheer her up by taking her to the mall. After Spike tells off a random man who makes a misogynistic comment (Go Spike!), she buys Emma a new white skirt to help her get over her depression.

(Awww! My mom used to do the same thing for me whenever I was depressed.)

The next day, Emma wears that cute, bright white skirt to school.

And gets her first period.

This episode is a good reminder of why you never wear white when your period is coming. It’s also a good reminder that your period is nothing to be ashamed of, which is something that we shouldn’t have to be reminded of but, unfortunately, we sometimes do. When Emma delivers her book report while wearing oversized gym shorts, JT makes a dumb comment asking if Emma had an accident. Emma replies that “No, I just got my period for the first time …. it happens to 50% of the population. Perfectly natural, nothing to be ashamed of.” Woo hoo! You tell ’em, Emma! And seriously, go to Hell, JT. No wonder you’re going to end up dying in another 5 seasons.

Seriously, Emma’s character usually annoys me to death (and, in later episodes, you’ll see why) but she rocks in this episode. But you know who is really cool in this episode? Paige, who comes to Emma’s rescue with a pad and assures her that coming of age is no big deal.

As for the other storyline …. eh. It’s another boring Ashley/Jimmy storyline. Jimmy’s parents are professionals who are too busy working to make dinner for their son. So, Jimmy has been hanging out at Ashley’s house. Ashley gets tired of her boyfriend always being around. When Toby overhears Ashley whining to her mother about Jimmy always being at the house, he tells Jimmy.

Did I mention that it’s Jimmy’s birthday?

Long story short, Jimmy breaks up with Ashley and ends up spending his birthday alone, eating pizza. Oh my God! That’s so sad! Seriously, couldn’t he at least have gotten Spinner to come over and split a Ritalin with him? But, the next day, he and Ashley get back together. This will be a recurring theme through Jimmy and Ashley’s time on Degrassi so get ready for a lot of break-ups and make-ups.

(I still found it funny that part of Ashley’s issue with Jimmy hanging out at the house was that he was bonding with Toby. I can only imagine how Toby feels about having Terri basically living in the room next to his. This season, it’s hard not to notice that Terri is always following Ashley around. Eventually, in the third season, Terri will get a boyfriend and a life outside of being Ashley and Paige’s servant. Unfortunately, Terri’s boyfriend will eventually end up leaving her with serious brain damage before shooting Jimmy in the back….)

And remember — Degrassi goes there!